Thursday, November 29, 2007

The false 'humanity' of the anti-choicers

By LibbyUpdated below

The reason I try to avoid reading The Corner is that when I read crap like this, I get all 'Geraldo Rivera' and feel like spitting at KLo.

The year before it passed, the federal government had financed 300,000 abortions for low-income women. Afterward, this number dropped essentially to zero — the women either found another way to pay for their abortions or chose life for their unborn children. The National Right to Life Committee has estimated, conservatively, that the Hyde Amendment has prevented at least one million abortions. That’s one million Americans who are alive today because of Henry Hyde.

Yeah, that would the same million Americans who are hungry, cold, without health insurance and work in dead end jobs -- when they can get work -- because people like KLo spend all their waking hours trying to derail social programs that would allow them a decent quality of life.

Nonetheless, rest in peace Mr. Hyde. Far be from me to speak ill of the dead.

16 Comments:

Jim Martin said...

I'm sorry Libby, for even though I do visit regularly, I have not commented until now, but the callousness of your post deserves a rebuke.You openly imply that these people who were not aborted would be better off dead than living their lives.In my life I have at times been cold, hungry and in a dead end job. I have in recent years been without health insurance for extended periods.Nonetheless, it has been a wonderful life and I would not be better off had I been aborted.Politics is one thing, but this post is insane.

Well Jim. Long time no hear. Please don't bother to project your own guilt on me. I'm not implicitly making any such case.

What I'm explictly saying is that people like KLo who hold themselves up as champions of the 'right to life' and then fight against social safety net programs are callously indifferent, if not outright hostile, to those who are born into poverty and are the least able to rise above it without assistance.

I've also been cold, hungry and in a dead end job with no health insurance but I don't think that gives me the right to make moral judgements about another woman's choices and impose my beliefs on a decision that's already difficult enough. Any anti-choicer who doesn't also support programs that assist the poor once they're born is the cruelest kind of hypocrite.

For the record, I'm anti-abortion, but I'm very much pro-choice. The two positions are not mutually exclusive.

In response to Jim There are some economists that believe there is a correlation between abortion and crime. Unwanted children do not do as well as wanted children. their blog is here http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/yea it pisses me off too.

I don't agree they are better off dead than alive. However, I think one of the problems with the anti-abortion movement -- and I'm making a sweeping statement here that does not apply to everyone -- is that many of its adherents also oppose the kinds of social programs that would help these children. (A point that Libby makes.) So the respect for life ends the moment the children are born.

Well Chef, there's an economic correlation between wanted and unwanted children?How well did the aborted ones do?You see how the argument goes?No matter what is said about choice, it's still a human being.I'm all for any woman making informed choices and then endure either the consequences or benefits. It is truly no one's business, but to put it into numbers is callous and to say that all of these children would have been unwanted is inhuman.Economists? Just when you think you've heard all of the stupid arguments, another one comes up.

I do not understand the mentality that believes a fertilized zygote automatically equals Jerry Falwell in a three-piece polyester suit.

The writer who wrote "Alien" told me that the basis of the movie was to try and show men what rape was all about, having something growing inside you that you didn't invite.

And, of course, Hyde was most solicitous about theoretical children and happy to harm real women because it was a problem that he would never face: whether or not to choose to let that zygote progress, even long after it was born.

There ARE worse things than dying, and if "jim" had ever actually lived, he'd know that.

But it's easy to live in front of a television, with central air-conditioning, relatively free of diseases, and pass judgment on what "poverty" and "disease" can be.

I do love it when some pseudo-intellectual makes some comment about abortion and Jerry Falwell in the same sentence, shows his kneejerk partisanship and proves just how "pseudo" his intellect truly is.And then he comes with psycho babble about Alien.This is not about dying, it's about being given a chance to live.Yes, Libby, I think Waldo would fit in very well on your blogroll. He seems to be very good at making judgments about people he doesn't know and has not met.Keep up the consistent, if not good, work.

(* BTW: Do you actually KNOW the difference between a "pseudo-intellectual" and an "intellectual"? Or was the snark merely reflexive and you were trying to impress me with the big words you know? ... which would be, come to think of it, the hallmark of a 'pseudo-intellectual.')

You're more than welcome Hart and I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Jim was a co-blogger here for several months at my invitation and I once considered him a friend. At some point, for reasons still unclear to me, he decided he hated everything I stand for and abruptly quit.

He apparently harbors some ill feelings. I don't. I've been blogging too long to take anything too personally.